


if you talk, you're gonna get shot

by ursa_maritima



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Consensual Violence, Critical Role Relationship Week, Gen, Minor Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-02
Updated: 2019-01-02
Packaged: 2019-10-02 19:12:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,121
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17269475
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ursa_maritima/pseuds/ursa_maritima
Summary: Vex and Grog have very different views on what it means to be a pincushion.  just post ep77 or 06-08 of campaign 1.(I clicked the graphic warning because I've been an EMT for too long to have a good handle on what is 'normal' and what is 'wtf we're in the middle of DINNER' but it's one brief description of two arrow-shots about 2/3 the way through the fic.  erring on the side of caution!)yes, it's a hamilton lyric.  it's not my fault, it's been stuck in my head all year (ba-dum tsss).edited because in the clear light of not-nearly-midnight i noticed i posted the wrong draft version...should be significantly less typos now.





	if you talk, you're gonna get shot

The salle used to be quiet this time of morning. Not that she used it on a regular basis this early in the morning - the low-angle sunlight played hell with her aim, the dew soaked into the popped stitching on her boot that she still hasn’t fixed so she’d have a wet sock all morning, and in the summer those _infuriating_ tiny little bugs that were invisible but had impossibly strong bites would rise in disgusting clouds with the warming air - but it had the better target setup and, more importantly, the only one that offered unseen servants who would fetch her arrows back for her. For the last few weeks, though, she’s been joined by Grog, who’s taken to hacking at the practice dummy nearest the range, heckling the other early risers, and running laps, of all things, sometimes veering between her and the downrange targets and away again before she can yell at him for it.  
If she didn’t know better, she’d think he was doing that last part on purpose. That early morning sunlight hits his grey skin and makes it glow anywhere that isn’t a tattoo or a scar, which serves to highlight the ones she put there with her own arrows. She keeps catching glimpses of them out of the corner of her eye, and it’s driving her crazy. Of the many scars Grog wears, they’re tiny, almost invisible short little lines that can barely be seen even with the light limning them in silver-grey. To Vex, though, they’re glaringly obvious, staring back at her in steady, silent judgement. You created us, they say. Your arrows, striking true as usual. One after another after another… She fires two arrows into the farthest target, shaking her head to clear the thoughts away.  
She’d tried to apologize after the fight, and Grog had shrugged, mumbled something about how he’d already said that her brambleshot didn’t bother him, those pinsticks were hardly different and gone back to his chicken. They weren't accidents, though- nor collateral damage balanced out by the damage she’d dealt to their mutual foe. Those scars came from carefully aimed shots, her bow drawn taught with the intent to cause harm solely to Grog. “Kill your friends!” Gatekeeper Xanthras had ordered, and she’d _chosen_ Grog over the rest of her family.

\---

Grog watches Vex stand motionless by the archery targets for a long moment before breaking her stillness to fire, and frowns at the tension in her stance. He likes it up close and personal, but he’s fought enough things at distances to know when tension is good, and when it’s bad. Hers is bad, though the arrows still hit center-mark. She was doing it again, moping about turning him into a porcupine back at Fort Daxio. Clearly the subtle approach- hanging around and running in and out of her fire lane was _too_ subtle for her to get that he didn’t care about getting shot. He’d have to try the direct approach. He slings the blood axe around, burying it deep into what remained of the dummy. “You stay there, I’ll be back in a minute,” he says, patting the haft gently before turning to cross the field towards Vex. He waits for her to run out of arrows, the Unseen servant swiftly Gathering them to return to Vex, before planting himself just within her shortest distance. After a moment's thought he strikes a pose, gazing off into the distance.  
“Grog,” Vex sighs loudly enough for him to hear, “You’re in my lane again.”  
“Oh?” Grog rotates to face her, striking a different pose.  
“...Grog. Move,” she says, unnocking her arrow as she squints at him in the glare of the sun.  
“Naw, you gotta be bored shootin’ at those little targets. I’m bored hittin’ things that don’t hit back. Shoot at me, it’ll be fun.”  
“I’m not-” Vex drops her head back, staring up at the sparse clouds high overhead. “I’m not going to shoot at you, Grog. Fuck’s sake. That’s ridiculous.”  
“What? Not like it hurts.”  
“Grog.”  
“Bees hurt worse, Vex.” He makes a bring it on motion with both hands before sticking his thumbs in his belt, waving his elbows idly.  
“What would Pike say if she heard you asking me to shoot you. For practice. Because you’re _bored_?” Grog bends over laughing.  
“Pikey? Pike would’ve hit me twice already! _You_ ask Pike about that time she broke my shin, she’ll tell ya! I’m not gonna let you _hurt_ me, Vex. This’s all just for funsies.”  
“Pike broke your shin?”  
“Yeah. Bet her she couldn’t tackle me to the ground, back when we was with Wilhand. She took off runnin’ and _bam_ ” he mimes her shoulder-checking him before slapping his left leg “smacked into me, right here. Forgot that she’d been testing out a new set of pauldrons and was still wearin’ em. Still didn’t take me down, though.”  
“Not the same thing, Grog.”  
In response to this he groans theatrically. “C’mon, Vex! I'm bored! This is worse than shopping. Best shot. Let’s see it.” Vex flips the arrow around her fingers, watching him dubiously. “You use your lil thorny bits all the time when I’m right up in somethin’s face, and I’m tellin’ you it’s no different, yeah?”  
“Casting Hail of Thorns when I know you’ll catch the edge of it is a little bit different from me aiming an arrow at your face, Grog.”  
“Never said you had to aim at my beauteous visaaaage,” he retorted, waving a hand down his face. He’d learned that one from Scanlan last week, as befits his Grand Poobah status. “But c’mon, Vex. Wastin’ field time, them lil kids of Kash’s will come to take it over soon.”  
“You asked for it,” she says, and he rolls his eyes, doesn’t see her bow flick up as she takes a shot.  
“Yeah, like a million times alre-” he grunts, the rest of his words drifting away. It hurts, yeah- just under his clavicle, biting deep. Usually he’s raging and doesn’t even feel it, really. Without it, he can feel the arrow’s edge grind against bone, and he knows if she’d wanted, it would have been in his neck instead. Still. He waves a hand at her. “C’mon, Vex, best shot, I said, not one of these piddly little-” her eyes narrow, her bowstring flaring red this time as she brings the bow up and shoots in that one fluid motion so familiar from the battlefields.

Yeah.  
Okay.

That’s more like it. That’s a lung. He has to breathe slowly, shallowly in before spreading his hands wide, grinning at her. “See? Two shots, an’ I’m still here. Not even raging! I’m the biggest and the baddest, you gotta take us out, you gotta take me out first. Not even you can take me out that easy, Vexy. Vaxy’s a sneaky motherfucker, he’s hard to hit. Pikey’s a little metal badass. Scanlan?” Grog shook his head. “You had a pretty good shot at Scanlan and Percy, up there on that tower. You didn’t take ‘em, cause you know they’d be hurt. Me?” He reaches up, idly scratching at the skin below the arrow in his shoulder. “Like bugs. Lil bee stings. I’m the one who takes the hits, cause I’m the best for it. An’ you know it. Stop mopin’ around about it ‘cause you feel guilty about shootin’ me instead of your boyfriend.”  
She looks less droopy now, at least. Not quite standing like she usually does, like she can chew up the world and spit out the bits she likes, but a little more like her usual self. But he can feel that lung starting to get gurgly and since this whole thing’s been about how he can take any hits, all the hits, all the time, he can’t let her see that.  
“Hey, Kash’s sending in somma his boys to train, you should clear out before I send one flyin’ into you, get you all squashed.” She smiles at that, slings her bow over her shoulder and starts walking past him off the fields.  
“Here,” she starts to say, reaching out with slightly-glowing fingertips for his shoulder. “So you don’t scare the poor boys-” He bats her fingers away gently.  
“That’s no fun, leave it. Looks better.” He tracks her with his eyes until she’s gone, waits a few beats just in case before letting the air out of his lungs with a groan.  
The packed sand of the shooting lanes seems a lot farther away than earlier. Sitting down’s probably a good idea, yeah? Yeah.  
He’s taken a knee in the hard-packed sand, trying to figure out the best way of getting back to his room and that healing potion in his bag when he hears a soft sigh behind him. Shit.  
He knows that sigh.  
“Hey, Pikey.”  
“Oh, Grog,” Pike says with a smile in her voice, and he straightens up as best he can.  
“I‘m fine, ‘m good, just-” she touches the back of his shoulder gently, the briefest of brush of cool before the warmth of her healing floods into his back, and he groans again, this time in relief. Her fingers make quick work of removing the arrows, and another wave of warmth takes the last lingering stiffness from the wounds.  
“That was really nice, Grog,” she says, pulling her gardening gloves out from where she’d tucked them in her belt.  
“Well, you know, us titled persons of importance have a resp- Ow!” She’d slugged him a good one right under the ribs.  
“Persons of importance have a responsibility of keeping themselves safe, Grog! Why weren’t you raging? What if she’d shot better that first time?”  
“Aw, Pike, that was the idea-” she looks like she’s about to punch him again, and he stands up hastily. “She knows I can take it when I’m raging, but she keeps lookin’ at me all mopey ever since that fight at Daxio. We gotta all fight together, Pike.”  
"And that means putting yourself at risk when you could have just talked to her?"  
"Aw." He scrunches his fingers up under his harness because it's that or poke at the itchy fresh skin, and he knows from past experience that Pike won't hesitate in punching him again. "I tried talkin' to her, but I dunno if she was just being her stubborn-ass self or if I wasn't wording right. I don't know all that fancy talking, where you say more things than what the words say. I _do_ know how many and how hard a hit i can take."  
"You're better with words than you think, Grog." Pike starts walking towards where he'd left his axe, tugging him along after her.  
"Thought you were headed back to your garden."  
"I was." She lifts a shoulder in a careless shrug. "But you know what I overheard yesterday? One of Kash's kids dropped a halberd on his foot, started cursing up a storm, and then bowed at me! Said 'sorry mother Pike, i-' Stop laughing!" Pike thumps the back of his leg as he bends nearly in half, cackling. "He said he didn't mean to offend my sensibilities! Me!" She's staring off at the center square in remembered indignation, and this is one of his favorite Pikeys. Drawn up as tall as she gets, eyes flashing- this isn't the righteous fury that she gets in battle, all fire and lights, no. This is all Trickfoot, mischevious and tricksy, and full of the promise of gentle mayhem.  
"Weeelll," he drawls the word out slowly, "did you know that a buncha Kash's guards are gonna be here any minute?"  
"I did not," she grins, her eyes saying otherwise.  
"What a coincidink," he enunciates carefully- another one of his Grand Poobah words- and rips the axe out, slinging it carelessly over one shoulder. "Wanna cause a ruckus an' show them the only sensibility you got is knowing when someone needs a hug and when someone needs a punch in the kidneys?"  
"We should probably stay away from kidneys, Grog." She laughs at his over-dramatic pout. "They're still learning, after all. But yeah! C'mon, let's make a mess."  
She waits for him to be in the middle of a step before swinging her fists around, clenched tightly around each other, into the back of his knee. As he topples to the sand with a shudder of flung sand, she takes off at a dead run for the salle at the edge of the shooting lanes, her laughter ringing loudly. Grog grins up at the sky for a moment, giving her a tiny head start, before lunging to his feet with a delighted bellow and following hard on her heels. 

**Author's Note:**

> written for the first CR relationship week. late, shmate, at least I finished the damn thing, right? right.
> 
> i apparently can't not keep adding Pike to places. i'd say sorry but i'm not, because any excuse to let yeah-a-cleric-but-not-a-saint pickle out to play is a good one!
> 
> i had, at one point, looked up what Vex's average damage and crit/max damage would have been after the ft daxio fight and how much of a dent she could make in an un-raging Grog and i can't for the life of me figure out where i put it. oh well.


End file.
